Gale stood in the center of his new dorm room, sorting through the contents of yet another plastic keepbox, a look of passive concentration on his face. A few things had already been put in place: a few posters were hung up next to his bed, a label with his name on it was stuck to the door, and a couple of knickknacks were placed on his desk. One of said knickknacks was just a little framed mirror with a stand. Blue jays are vain birds, and Gale certainly wasn’t an exception. He admired his sleek blue crest, his smooth blue, black and white feathers, his azure eyes, his pointy beak… he was getting distracted. He fished through the box, finding some family photos he wanted to put out.
  Words could not express how excited the little bird was to be at college. From the moment he’d stepped foot on campus, he felt like he belonged. When he’d gotten his room key, he’d been told that his roommate hadn’t arrived yet. He was ok with that. The room was a little less… cramped when he was the only one in it, and he still had plenty of time to get settled before meeting them, imagining what the future held. Gale would work towards his biology degree, he’d go to parties, he’d meet so fucking many new people. Who knew, he might even find a nice girl to settle down and raise a brood with in a few years’ time. Just thinking about what was ahead made his feathers fluff up.
 As he placed a photo of him and his parents on the desk, Gale happened to notice a geode he’d taken out of the box had ended up on the floor somehow. “Huh, whoops.” He thought, leaning over to pick it up, his rear facing the door with his tailfeathers in the air.
 CLICK
 “Ooh… nice ass.”
 Feeling flustered by that comment, Gale stood up straight and turned his body around to face the door, his heart skipping a beat once he discovered what he was facing. It looked to be a housecat, an Egyptian Mau, to be exact. His fur was short and silvery, and his eyes were a bright shade of chartreuse green. He wore a pair of khakis and a blue and green hoodie with the college athletic logo, a gator, emblazoned on the front, one paw stuffed in the pocket while the other held a room key. The cat looked at least a foot or two taller than Gale, and though it was hard to tell beneath the hoodie, he seemed to have a potbelly.
 “Uh… this is awkward. I… I’m Gale.”
 “Ramy. Pleasure to meet you, you smell really good.”
 “…Wha?”
 Ramy’s friendly smile remained on his face, mild confusion present in his eyes, before the realization that a non-feline like his new roommate would have no grasp on the concept he was speaking of hit him, his expression going blank. “Oh, right… cats’ senses of smell work differently than birds’. Certain species give off really strong, distinct scents to me… I-I could tell you’d be a bird before seeing you because I could smell one through the door.” Hearing this explained to him made the jay a little uneasy. “So birds… smell good to you?” He asked. The kitty nodded, his face… suppressing something. “Yeah, pretty good. At least you seem to shower regularly.” There was an awkward silence, the cringe between Ramy and Gale palpable. “I’m… going to grab my stuff, I’ll be right back.” The cat said, slinking back out of the room in apparent embarrassment before Gale could think to respond to him.
 He’d known the cat for less than 5 minutes and already, they weren’t on very good terms. Fucking fantastic.
**
**
**
Fortunately, Ramy did eventually come back, dragging a small wagon with boxes of belongings stacked in it. For a moment, the bird’s severe anxiety gave him the notion that the cat had been weirded out by him and fled. Still, the guy had not really spoken a word to him since he returned, more focused on sorting through his own things. His stomach was gurgling audibly, and he looked very uncomfortable. “Poor guy,” Gale thought to himself. “Must be nervous being away from home.”
 GRRRRGG
 Gale distracted himself from Ramy’s rumbling belly, instead looking down at the bottom of his last box, about to put the finishing touches on his side of the dorm. He picked up some more framed photos he had of him and his friends from high school, and placed them on his desk, next to the mirror. Speaking of high school… where was his hoodie? It wasn’t anything special, just a baggy white sweatshirt that had probably been bought from Target or somewhere similar, but Gale loved it for it’s sentimental value. His friend Mark had given it to him as a gift after graduation, and it was heavily customized. The words “THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES” were written across the front in black fabric marker, accompanied by colorful signatures, messages and doodles from his best friends. He’d definitely want to put that away somewhere safe.
 The blue jay looked around his immediate surroundings, checking the boxes around him for the hoodie. Then he remembered, the box with his clothing in it had been on the other side of the room near the wardrobe when his roommate came in, and he hadn’t moved it while he was gone getting the wagon. He stood up, turning around, only to have a squawk forced out of his lungs as the silver feline enveloped him in an unexpected hug.
 “H-Hey, Gale, uh…”
 “What are you doing? Let go of me!”
 The short avian was lifted and held against his roommate’s chubby torso, his talons mere inches from the security of the floor. He tried to pull himself free, pushing against Ramy with his wings, but he just wasn’t strong enough. The kitty’s paws were soft and delicate, but also surprisingly strong, holding him firmly in place. Ramy looked into the jay’s eyes, an apologetic look of hunger and sheepishness present in his small, anxious smile. “I’m super sorry about this,” he started to explain, his tail waving around. “But I’ve been running on nothing but two McDonald’s hash browns I ate at 6:00 this morning for the entire day, and you…” He paused, hoping he wouldn’t offend the little bird. Not that it mattered much, Gale’s eyes were widening, and he was starting to give off a pang of fear. “Your bird scent… it’s so enticing and overwhelming, its stinking up the dorm and I just can’t take it any more! So… I’m going to eat you. Sorry.”
 What the fuck? Gale shuddered. What was Ramy talking about? He was going to be eaten? Like… swallowed whole, and… digested? He couldn’t stop himself from looking down at Ramy’s gut, pressed against his own slightly pudgy body. There were so many thoughts clouding his tiny head, many of them frightened and claustrophobic. Oh god, was he going to be stuffed in that potbelly? It was so small, he couldn’t fit in there… he didn’t want to go in there. It would be so cramped, there’d be no room to breathe… oh god, he really didn’t want to go in there!
 “You’re my first prey, so… go easy on me, ok Gale? I promise it won’t hurt too much…”
 “No… n-no… please… oh god, please, don’t-nnff!! Mmmffmmmff!!!”
 The Egyptian Mau didn’t even seem to hear Gale, instead shutting his eyes, popping his toothy jaws wide open, and bringing them upon his head. Within seconds, the poor birdie’s beak and face had been swallowed, his neck slipping into the cat’s throat with it. Gale shut his eyes tightly and tried not to gag as he began to descend. The slick, mucus-lubricated walls pressed in on him, squeezing his cheekbones and forcing him down.
 RRRRIP!!
 The avian felt his devourer grab his shirt by two ends of the collar and simply rip in in half clean off of him, exposing his feathery body. Ramy just lifted his meal higher so that gravity would squish his lunch down quicker. He had to do this as fast as possible, he didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention, after all. He let the blue jay’s body sink deeper, his gullet bulging with tasty, wiggly meat. For someone who didn’t want to be eaten, he sure wasn’t doing much to stop it. The cat used his claw to dig into the waistband of Gale’s shorts and boxers, flinging them off of his legs along with his shoes and socks, revealing his family jewels to the world. Even while he was halfway inside of a cat, the avian shamefully blushed, his face hot with humiliation. This couldn’t be real, why was this happening?…
 GLLP!
 ULK!
 GLLPP!!
 With a quiet few swallows, Ramy finished up, letting his roommate’s thin legs sink into him, shutting his mouth around the claws on his toes. As the lump settled, he sighed, blowing away a few feathers that had gotten caught in his teeth. “Ooohhh…” he moaned, trying to keep his balance. Very quickly, the weight proved to be just too much for him, and he took a seat on his bed, letting his stomach rest on his plump thighs, his tail curled towards it. His hoodie’s hem had ridden up, and he could see the tight shape of a balled-up birdie beneath his short fur. He could only awkwardly stroke the squirming bulge with his paws, feeling it gurgling beneath his grasp. Perhaps he bit off more than he could chew… he would’ve been better off eating someone smaller, like a mouse or something… a mouse would taste better, too.
 “Nnnnn!! Nmmff! Rmmmy, pllfff!!”
 “Shh, shh, it’s ok…” Ramy whispered to his whimpering prey, trying to reassure him. “I know it’s terrible, but… I-I’m a pred, and you’re my natural prey, a-and… you just smelled so tasty… It’ll be quick and easy, I promise.” He could feel his body beginning to work, his stomach producing acid to break down Gale’s delicate, meaty body. He would inevitably kill the poor blue jay in the process, ripping his life away for fat and nutrients. And yet… he didn’t mind so much. He could feel every little wiggle his food was making beneath the surface. It was so sensual, so powerful, it made his footpaws twitch and his tail wag. Why did this feel so good? He was committing a murder! A murder that was an… awfully long commitment. Ramy’s father had told him it could take up to 12 hours to melt someone down, and exploring campus with this much weight and an obvious stomach bulge was out of the question. The feline sighed, immediately followed up by a blue feather-spitting burp. He’d better find some way to pass the time in this room.
**
**
**
Gale had lost track of how long he had spent in this crushing chamber. It was easy to lose track of time surrounded by nothing but pitch black darkness. The only real constants were the barrage of intense messages banging around in his skull and the slime smothering him. All he wanted was not to be here.
 “Please!! Ramy!! I want out!!!” As the minutes ticked by, his quiet whimpering had graduated into full-voiced begging, The blue jay writhing and kicking helplessly. The lack of space in the kitty’s stomach, and the incessant squishing making it ever tighter, was sending Gale’s claustrophobia into overdrive. His wings hopelessly beat at and pawed at the slippery walls, only succeeding in making some cute bulges on the outside.
 This couldn’t be real… this couldn’t be happening… not to him… not so long ago, he was a handsome, hopeful blue jay, unpacking his things, putting the finishing touches on his dorm, and Ramy had turned him into food in mere minutes. He was curled up into a painfully tight ball of quivering birdie meat in a cat’s warm, humid belly, deep beneath his fur, skin and muscle. The vile stench of acid and bacteria assaulted Gale’s poor nostrils, making him feel sick. Every contraction of the disgusting pink flesh threatened to pop him like a water balloon, and it was making him lose his mind. He wouldn’t die in here… he couldn’t… was Ramy really going to kill him?
 A small tingle was quick to answer that question. It had started being rather small, just an itching sensation on his talons and legs that couldn’t be scratched. But after a while, it only got worse and worse. Soon, it had evolved into an intense, fiery pain digging at his skin, all over his body. Gale stifled a scream, struggling in discomfort as he directed his teary eyes downward. The pool of foul fluids at the bottom of the stomach had risen rapidly, the acid now nearly submerging him, reaching halfway up his pecs. They were starting to assault his tender flesh, making his blue, white and black feathers slough from his body, often taking blood and skin with them. For an avian who had never been in much major pain during his life, the burning, dizzying horror of his body melting like a marshmallow, with all of the hurting that implies, was way too much.
 “Aaaaaaaahhaaaahhhh!!!!” Gale began screaming incessantly, trying to shake off the soup of death as his bloodied form softened up. After sitting in fear for so long, he was now crying, kicking, pleading for his very existence. “Please, Pleeeeeeaaaaase let me gooooo!!! I’m melting!!! Oh god, please, I don’t wanna diiiiiiieeee!!!!” He was interrupted as something in his leg started buckling under the pressure. Already delirious with fear, he wasn’t ready when his claustrophobic nightmares came true in the form of his femur sharply cracking. “Aaaaiiiiaaa!!! Oooh… oh god, my leeeeeeg…” the bird screeched. The pain was white hot, nothing like he had ever experienced before. And considering how rough the organ was treating him, it was about to happen again… and again… and again…
 Ramy was not even paying attention while this was happening. He felt the need to relax and take his mind off of the fact that he was doing horrible things to an innocent person, and so he’d had dug through his things and found his pair of matte white wireless headphones. They fit snugly and comfortably on his pointed ears. Noise-canceling, too. The kitty had found himself very easily distracted, watching video essays on his phone, fully focused on the screen. Without hearing what was actually happening, it was easy for Ramy to assume that the violent struggling in his gut was just his lunch being difficult and refusing to accept his fate, blissfully unaware of how badly his digestive system was treating him. However loudly Gale tried screaming, pleading for someone, anyone to rescue him, no one was going to hear him. His sobs couldn’t make it very far past all of the fat and muscle lining Ramy’s abdomen, let alone the dorm room’s walls, and even Ramy himself couldn’t hear him with his headphones on.
 It felt like years of torment for Gale. His feathers were falling off in wet clumps, his blood was leaking out, his soft flesh was digesting away into nutrients, and his bones were snapping and popping into pieces. Every moment that passed, his mind became hazier, and his prison became more intolerable. He could feel himself dying… most of his muscles wouldn’t move, and the ones that would required a tremendous amount of effort and caused intense, fiery pain to only produce small twitches. He knew his time was up… he tried to make his death peaceful. He thought of his life, his achievements… only to be reminded that he hadn’t really accomplished anything. He’d only made it to 18, way too young to die, let alone do anything meaningful. Gale could feel his ribcage starting to give way, a few cracks already sounding. The bird could only be thankful that his friends and family wouldn’t see him like this. He could at least die with dignity.
 Wait… his family wouldn’t know what happened to him… they wouldn’t even know he died… he’d essentially be wiped from the face of the earth…
 “N-No… please… my p… my p-parents…” The dissolving blue jay very quickly changed his mind, deciding he wanted to live. Unfortunately, it was far, far too late for him. Not only would he stand no chance of surviving outside of Ramy’s guts, he had already begun to shut down. As his organs turned to soup and his limbs refused to budge anymore, Gale half gargled and half whimpered his final words. “Please… someone… s-save me…”
 BBRRRAAAAPPP!!!
 KKRRRUNCHH!!
 With a gaseous expulsion of rank air and feathers, the stomach walls closed in on the hopeless freshman, mashing him from a blue jay stew into a blue jay pulp. Ramy didn’t even notice anything, instead thumping his chest and brushing off the specks of azure that had fallen into his chest and phone. He didn’t notice for another hour, until his video ended and he happened to brush his hand against his gut, only to find it soft and squishy instead of rigid and bulging as it was before. Looking down, the feline discovered it was only about the size of a pregnant stomach now, round and undefined, the occupant deceased beyond any and all doubt. “Sorry about that,” he groaned. “but a cat’s gotta eat. You don’t blame me for this… right?” His only response was a loud churn and some muffled sloshing. “…I guess that’s a yes?”
**
**
DISPOSAL AHEAD
**
**
Ramy slowly opened his groggy eyes to near-complete darkness. As his vision adjusted, he found he was in the dorm room, and it appeared to still be dark. Whipping his blanket away, he slid out of bed, his feet hitting the floor, and looked out the window. It was still nearly completely dark outside, the sun only just rising. Why had he woken up so early? He wasn’t an early bird: the opposite, actually.
 GRRRRGGLL
 PFFFRRRTT!!
 A nauseating toot quickly alerted the cat to the heavy load sitting in his colon, remembering the big meal he had… seemed he wanted to be let out now. He sighed, tired, his eyes sagging. “Ok, ok…”
 Ramy stumbled out of the dorm, finding it hard to navigate the dark hallways. He just needed to remember where the restroom was without smacking into a wall or tripping over something. It took a few minutes, but he found his floor’s deserted communal bathroom and found a stall. By now, his eyes had adjusted well to the darkness, and he could easily tell that the stall didn’t have any toilet paper stocked. He looked in a few others, only to discover they had the same problem. By now, Ramy’s guts were screaming at him to empty them, and he really didn’t feel like wiping his ass with the course paper towels by the sink, so he decided to rush back to his room and find something to substitute. Looking around, he couldn’t see anything helpful… the posters, maybe, but he didn’t think they’d be good at cleaning his fur…
 His eyes caught something bright. It was a white hoodie, covered in marker and sitting neatly in one of the keepboxes his would-be roommate had brought. That looked soft and clean, but the cat had his doubts. “Will Gale be mad if I take his stuff?” He asked. He felt his guts rumble, and looked down. “Oh, right.”
 After rushing back to the restroom, he pulled his lounge pants down, took a seat in one of the stalls and locked the door, double checking it. He was surprised to feel a little extra weight sag onto his lap and a little extra padding cushion his rump. Blue jays were fattening, apparently, and this one went straight to his gut, which was now plump, round and doughy. Relaxing himself, the cat pushed out one first toot.
 FFRRTTT!!
 A long, thick turd emerged from his pucker, falling slowly into the toilet water. Ramy could feel something tickling his hole as he pushed the snake from his fat cheeks, hearing it splash into the water with a loud plop. Grunting harder, he felt more logs of former avian squeeze from his colon and into the toilet, stretching out and tingling his asshole. His feet twitched uncomfortably, and he gritted his teeth. His family never told him about this part…
 After a deeply discomforting moment or two, Ramy was relieved to find his intestines were finally empty. Clutching Gale’s hoodie in his hand, he wiped off any and all residue from his dump, smearing it with smelly brown shit. His nose already wrinkling at the scent from the bowl beneath him, he flushed the toilet standing up and watching the smelly brown turd get sucked down the drain, bones, feathers and all. Even an entire skull was contained within the rancid feces, although it was quickly crunched into pieces going through the trapway. Ramy chucked the stained hoodie into a garbage can and covered it up with about half a dozen crumpled paper towels, then washed his paws clean.
 Stumbling back to his dorm, the cat decided he would go straight back into bed. Churning Gale into kitty litter had left him exhausted, and he didn’t have anywhere to be for hours. He flopped onto the bed and threw the blanket back over himself. He’d have a busy morning ahead of him. Before the usual orientation stuff, he’d finish setting up his side of the dorm, text his father and brother to tell them the good news about how he’d eaten his first prey, and practice what excuse he would give when someone asked him where his roommate had suddenly disappeared to.